Carl Fossum and Tim Parrish can be as busy on the bench as Boylan boys basketball players are on the court.

Fossum records every Boylan offensive and defensive rebound, assist, blocked shot and turnover, breaking the turnovers down into sub categories of bad passes, fumbles, violations and offensive fouls. He also keeps the opposing team’s offensive and defensive rebounds, turnovers and assists.

Parrish keeps a shot chart for every Boylan player with 12 courts (one for each player) on one sheet of paper. With a different color for each quarter. And for 23 years, when they both worked at Jefferson, Parrish also ran the clock and the scoreboard.

“Now that was multitasking,” Parrish said with a laugh.

Fossum and Parrish have worked together for 31 years, starting at Jefferson, then Byron, Guilford and, the last three years, at Boylan. On April 26, they will go into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame together. Boylan coach Mike Winters nominated them in the “friends of the game” category, and they’ll be inducted at a banquet in Bloomington.

“They are awesome,” Winters said. “They are absolutely the best. It’s such a huge advantage at halftime for them to be able to break down everything the other team is doing.”

Parrish, 55, started as Jefferson’s stats keeper as the student manager when Fossum, 57, played for the J-Hawks. Fossum had quit high school to become a baker at age 14 but returned to school as a sophomore after playing one of Jefferson’s stars, Dave Dzik, on the playground. Dzik talked him back to school.

After Fossum graduated, he took over Jefferson’s stats. In his second year, he spotted Parrish at a game and invited him to help out. “I grabbed a chart and finished the game,” Parrish said.

They’ve been together ever since.

Two of the players they charted were coaches they later worked for: former J-Hawks Winters and Dean Martinetti. They worked for Martinetti for five years at Jefferson, four at Byron and three at Guilford before Martinetti retired.

“That left Carl and I with some quiet winters for two or three years,” Parrish said.

They got back in the game when Winters, who is married to Martinetti’s sister, was hired at Boylan three years ago.

“It keeps me sane in the winter,” said Parrish, who is now retired from working the third shift at Sundstrand.

“We just love basketball,” said Fossum, who is the bakery manager at Schnucks on Charles Street. “We’re just having a blast.”

Page 2 of 2 - And doing it together. They keep track of so many stats that they need each other’s help to keep up.

“When Carl has to write things down, I am often idle,” Parrish said, “so when things get crazy, I am dictating to him so he can catch up. And when a flurry of shots are going on, he helps me. We work as a team constantly, calling out to each other what is happening.

“I absolutely love high school basketball. Whatever we can do that helps the coach obviously helps the kids, and that’s why we do it: to help the kids.”